#stopTPP - Global Exchange

Thanks to you and all your hard work, Fast Track was blocked in the House, last week, Friday (June 12). The House listened to your calls, read your emails, got your message and voted down the Fast Track package – a major blow to the corporate backers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership!

But is Fast Track really dead?

While Fast Track was given a fatal blow on Friday, Obama and Republican backers are doing everything possible to revive this corporate backed bill and to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement on (fast) track.

The proponents of fast tracking the TPP will not give up. A re-vote to reverse last week’s win is already in the works. The fight to stop the TPP is far from over. We must continue to remind our representatives to vote no on fast tracking the TPP.

We invite you to take a moment to read a recent post by Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkley, in the Huffington Post that underscores why Congress is having such a hard time passing Fast Track.

Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Nearly Dead

By Robert Reich
Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; author, ‘Beyond Outrage’

How can it be that the largest pending trade deal in history — a deal backed both by a Democratic president and Republican leaders in Congress — is nearly dead?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership may yet squeak through Congress but its near-death experience offers an important lesson.

It’s not that labor unions have regained political power (union membership continues to dwindle and large corporations have more clout in Washington than ever) or that the President is especially weak (no president can pull off a major deal like this if the public isn’t behind him).

The biggest lesson is most Americans no longer support free trade.

It used to be an article of faith that trade was good for America.

Economic theory told us so: Trade allows nations to specialize in what they do best, thereby fueling growth. And growth, we were told, is good for everyone.

But such arguments are less persuasive in this era of staggering inequality.

For decades almost all the gains from growth have been going to a small sliver of Americans at the top – while most peoples’ wages have stagnated, adjusted for inflation.

Economists point to overall benefits from expanded trade. All of us gain access to cheaper goods and services.
But in recent years the biggest gains from trade have gone to investors and executives, while the burdens have fallen disproportionately on those in the middle and below who have lost good-paying jobs.

So even though everyone gains from trade, the biggest winners are at the top. And as the top keeps moving higher compared to most of the rest of us, the vast majority feels relatively worse off.

To illustrate the point, consider a simple game I conduct with my students. I have them split up into pairs and ask them to imagine I’m giving $1,000 to one member of each pair.

I tell them the recipients can keep some of the money only on condition they reach a deal with their partner on how it’s to be divided up. They have to offer their partner a portion of the $1,000, and their partner must either accept or decline. If the partner declines, neither of them gets a penny.

You might think many recipients of the imaginary $1,000 would offer their partner one dollar, which the partner would gladly accept. After all, a dollar is better than nothing. Everyone is better off.

But that’s not what happens. Most partners decline any offer under $250 – even though that means neither of them gets anything.

This game, and variations of it, have been played by social scientists thousands of times with different groups and pairings, and with remarkably similar results.

A far bigger version of the game is being played on the national stage as a relative handful of Americans receive ever-larger slices of the total national income while most Americans, working harder than ever, receive smaller ones.

And just as in the simulations, those receiving the smaller slices are starting to say “no deal.”

Some might attribute this response to envy or spite. But when I ask my students why they refused to accept anything less than $250 and thereby risked getting nothing at all, they say it’s worth the price of avoiding unfairness.

Remember, I gave out the $1,000 arbitrarily. The initial recipients didn’t have to work for it or be outstanding in any way.

When a game seems arbitrary, people are often willing to sacrifice gains for themselves in order to prevent others from walking away with far more – a result that strikes them as inherently wrong.

The American economy looks increasingly arbitrary, as CEOs of big firms now rake in 300 times more than the wages of average workers, while two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Some of my students who refused anything less than $250 also say they feared allowing the initial recipient to keep a disproportionately large share would give him the power to rig the game even more in the future.
Here again, America’s real-life distributional game is analogous, as a few at the top gain increasing political power to alter the rules of the game to their advantage.

If the American economy continues to create a few big winners and many who feel like losers by comparison, opposition to free trade won’t be the only casualty.

Losers are likely to find many other ways to say “no deal.”

This Call to Action comes from the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC). CTC is a national coalition whose members include national regional, state, and city-based coalitions, organizations, and individual activists throughout the United States. Global Exchange is a member of CTC and a sponsor of this call to action.

In dozens of countries across the globe, groups are preparing for the April 18th Global Day of Action Against Unfair Trade. This particular call is for communities in the United States to join together in action that day to help derail Fast Track legislation that would enable the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and other corporate power grabs disguised as trade agreements to be rushed through Congress.

The latest rumor is that Fast Track legislation could be re-introduced the week of April 13th (something many are working hard to prevent!). If we don’t detail Fast Track, the TPP and other pending pacts would be rubber-stamped, with potentially devastating consequences for working people, family farmers, indigenous peoples, small businesses and the environment in the United States and around the globe. Stopping Fast Track is the single most important contribution those in the United States can make to ending corporate trade agreements that threaten to:

Destroy livelihoods and accelerate the global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions
Further commodify agriculture, trample food sovereignty, hurt small farmers and contribute to forced migration
Enable new corporate attacks on democratically-enacted environmental and consumer protections
Undermine global economic stability by prohibiting effective regulation of financial markets
Reduce access to life-saving generic medications, increase the cost of prescriptions and restrict freedom on the Internet

The threats that existing “Fast Tracked” trade agreements have already cost our communities, and the additional threats that new pacts pose, must be both acknowledged and resisted. We also need to spread the word that when people have come together across issue areas and geographic borders, we have defeated similar corporate power grabs like the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the Millennial Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and even past attempts at Fast Track — as recently as 2014.

By acting together, we will do so again now.

TAKE ACTION!

Please attend — or, ideally, organize — a demonstration, door-to-door canvass or educational event in your community on or around Saturday, April 18th calling on your Members of Congress to oppose Fast Track. Any action or event organized within a week of that date will be cross-promoted as part of this call.

Receive Updates on the Day of Action (and personally endorse the call to action if interested)

Promote an Action or Event You’ve Organized in Your Community (and be listed as a point of contact)

List Your Organization as Endorsing the Fast Track Day of Action (for organizational representatives only)

This Top Ten list was created by Public Citizen and released on May 19, 2014, on the eve of a May 19-20 ministerial-level meeting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Highlighting “the myriad outstanding TPP issues”, Public Citizen critiqued the “twenty-one multilateral TPP meetings since [the] ‘final’ August 2013 Brunei Negotiating Round, all without even a façade of stakeholder input process.”

Take action now to stop the TPP by telling your Congressperson to say No to Fast Track.

This is a re-post of ‘Top 10 Signs That Obama Administration Should Call It Quits on Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations’ with credit to Public Citizen.

While 600 official U.S. trade advisors, mainly comprised of corporate representatives, have continued to obtain information and give input on TPP negotiations, the last opportunity for official “stakeholder” input into the TPP took place August 24–31, 2013, during the 19th round of negotiations in Brunei. However, heads of state, negotiators and ministers have continued to meet in an attempt to finalize a TPP. Without even the pretense of providing opportunities for civil society to engage in the process, in the past nine months, TPP countries have had at least one heads-of-state summit, two ministerials, four meetings of chief negotiators, 14 so-called “intersessionals,” four Obama bilateral heads of state meetings and endless U.S.-Japan bilateral negotiations and ministerials. And these are only the meetings that have been reported.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to use large sums of taxpayer money to push negotiations to obtain a TPP agenda favored by corporate interests that remains stalled in the face of growing opposition in the United States and throughout TPP countries. The U.S. government was the official host of the Vietnam meeting this week and will be the official host of the upcoming ministerial meeting in Singapore.

Following are the top 10 indicators of why the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has decided to tamp down expectations once again for a negotiation that has supposedly been in an “end game” since last year:

U.S. and Japanese officials have offered conflicting versions of the outcomes of their bilateral “breakthrough”-but-not-a-deal non-deal from Obama’s Japan visit when briefing their TPP colleagues. Indeed, Japan was among the countries arguing that the state of U.S.-Japan market access negotiations was not sufficiently advanced to merit another TPP ministerial meeting.
An LDP bloc in Japan’s Diet adopted another resolution last week, while TPP chief negotiators met in Vietnam, reiterating the ruling party’s requirement that the TPP must protect a list of “sacred” agricultural commodities. The Japanese parliamentary action by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s own political party, making clear it will not support a TPP that zeroes out agricultural tariffs, is seen as a direct response to U.S. congressional and agribusiness statements that only a TPP that does so is politically acceptable.
Vietnam’s former trade minister, who is a current senior advisor on TPP negotiations, recently declared that Vietnam would not accept a TPP requirement that workers be allowed to establish independent labor unions. Former Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen said Vietnam instead would accept a compromise that devolved some power to local unions.
U.S. trade officials announced that Japan would advance market access talks with other TPP nations at the Vietnam lead negotiators meeting and that this was a sign of a new stage in negotiations – except that is not what Japan intended or did. Other countries are unlikely to even consider high-stakes tradeoffs relating to U.S. demands that could raise drug prices, extend the scope of investor-state dispute liability, limit financial regulation, discipline state-owned enterprises, and enforce labor and environmental standards without knowing what prospective market access opportunities might be forthcoming.
On May 1, the Sultan of Brunei implemented a new Sharia-law-based penal code that calls for jail terms for the wearing of immodest clothing, pregnancies outside marriage and abortion, with death by stoning for adulterers, gays and lesbians to be phased in later. The move prompted new U.S. constituencies to join the anti-TPP effort.
The USTR’s concern that the optics of not having a TPP ministerial when all of the countries’ trade ministers are together for a pre-scheduled APEC meeting overcomes opposition by other TPP nations to meeting when there is nothing ready for ministers to decide. Thus, the announcement of a “check-in” ministerial, which ministers from at least three TPP nations do not plan to attend.
Japanese officials or press are creating a series of red herring stories. Reports of near-deals on intellectual property, new U.S. proposals and more do not relate to what happened on the ground in Vietnam. Indeed, the Japanese press has run a series of follow-up stories speculating about who is generating the misdirects and why. There is no indication that key areas of controversy that existed in previous ministerials in the areas of intellectual property, investment, environment, labor, state-owned enterprises and more are much closer to resolution, even after the expense of the past months of negotiations. The U.S. ambassador to Malaysia recently expressed hope that the deal might be concluded by 2017.
The USTR continues to avoid raising currency issues at chiefs or ministerial levels, even though it is increasingly clear that a TPP without enforceable currency rules is dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress. If negotiations were nearing a final deal, this issue would have to be raised; Congress’ outspoken position has made clear to the other TPP nations that either this issue will be raised in negotiations or it will be raised later as an additional demand after ‘final’ concessions have been made, as was seen in the Korea Free Trade Agreement renegotiation four years after signing.
The prospect of passage of any form of trade authority in 2014 is dimming. Indeed, some congressional Fast Track proponents are already talking about the prospect that President Barack Obama may never obtain trade authority, so they are setting their sights on 2017. As the other TPP countries recognize the lack of congressional support for Fast Track and TPP, their willingness to make U.S.-negotiator-demanded concessions on issues with high political costs at home also dims.
In April, Chile’s Trade Ministry under recently elected President Michelle Bachelet confirmed that it is conducting a comprehensive review of the scope of the TPP and what its impact could be for Chile, noting that it is initiating a process of transparency and openness in the negotiations to include civil society input into their review. The website states, “We consider that there are many issues that are still open, the negotiation still has a ways to go.”

As another (the 18th) round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) begin this week in Malaysia, the clock is ticking towards completion of the text (still being kept secret from civil society).

The TPP is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history, with profound negative consequences for social, environmental and economic justice, as well as basic human rights throughout the world.

Negotiations on this monstrous pact started about three years ago, but there is still very little public knowledge about what it is and the threats it poses. The TPP’s architects are purposefully trying to keep the agreement’s potential impacts on jobs, climate regulations, Internet freedom, food safety, indigenous sovereignty and more hidden in the shadows.

It’s time to take a step and organize an action to resist the TPP this summer! Communities around the world have already organized their own actions and we’re encouraging you to join #TPPTuesday and organize and event to bring more awareness to your community (it does not have to be on a Tuesday!).

Then the #TPPTuesday Social Media Action Team will promote your action and log it in the growing list of actions that will happen this summer. Check out what we did a few weeks ago at Global Exchange when we heard the TPP negotiators were in San Francisco, CA.

Your #TPPTuesday action can range in complexity. To get you started, here are some TPP action ideas to get you inspired:

* Pack up a Congress member’s or mid-level Executive’s office and ship it overseas;
* Hold a “billionaires for free trade” event supporting some free trade promoter;
* Hold a funeral (for workers, jobs, the environment, democracy, etc.);
* Have a “make the link” action where you build a paper chain out of petitions, stapling it together in a corporate or Congressional office;
* Picket politicians’ fundraiser;
* Tape stuff to a politician or corporation’s door;
* Hold a “die-in”;
* Say “bon voyage” to jobs;
* Deliver a cake with a message/photo on it;
* Have a frog puppet explain the issue;
* Go door-to-door in your neighborhood warning neighbors about the TPP;
* Hold a candle-light vigil;
* Get a couple friends together and take a photo holding up an anti-TPP sign in front of a corporate office.

Inspired? Sign up to organize your action against the TPP!

Join us to Break the Silence on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Sign up here to join the #TPPTuesday Social Media Action Team – an online effort to promote and expand the growing movement against the next “NAFTA on steroids”.

By joining the new #TPPTuesday Social Media Action Committee you can help drag the TPP into the light of day. You will receive a weekly email with links to articles, photos, videos and action alerts from and about the growing cross-border movement to stop the TPP — which you can then pick and choose from to share with your social network over Twitter, Facebook, email and more.

This is one of the biggest issues of our time, but a lot of people don’t know about it yet. Let’s raise awareness about the TPP and the potentially disastrous effects it may have on people all over the world!

Please sign up to be part of the #TPPTuesday Social Media Action Committee today.

Find out more about the TPP by visiting: http://www.flushthetpp.org and http://www.citizenstrade.org

Sign the petition to halt TPP negotiations.

News broke late last week in a few subscription-only, on-line, trade journals that while the next full round of negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are slated to take place in Malaysia in mid-July, “the negotiating group on rules of origin will meet June 23-29 in San Francisco, according to Peruvian government resolutions published on June 16 and 17 in the country’s official newspaper.”

Often occurring under the radar, intersessionals, meetings that take place between official TPP negotiations, are happening in advance of the session in Malaysia to try to keep the free trade talks on track for conclusion this fall. Last month, negotiators of the ever controversial investment chapter met in Vancouver and were challenged with a teach-in on TPP, a night-time light projection of anti-TPP messages and a protest organized by the TPPxBorder Network.

Protest projection in Vancouver B.C. June 2013

A meeting in San Francisco on Rules of Origin? As Arthur Stamoulis from the Citizens Trade Campaign explains,

“One of the least talked about chapters of the TPP is something called ‘Rules of Origin’. Rules of Origin are the standards that must be met in order for a product to be labeled “Made in the USA,” “Made in Brunei,” “Made in Vietnam” or wherever in order to qualify for the provisions set by the overall TPP Agreement.

There are different ways of evaluating a product’s origin, but one common way is by looking at the value of the parts that make up a finished product that’s to be exported. So, for example, if the Rule of Origin on cars is set at 50% — at least half of the parts in a finished automobile need to come from Japan in order to be labeled “Made in Japan” under the pact. If the Rule of Origin is only set at 30%, up to 70% of the parts can come from elsewhere and the car can still be labeled Japanese.”

We thought that the Rules of Origin negotiators would like to hear from former sweatshop worker Chie Abad, who once suffered under an earlier version of these Rules of Origin in the U.S. protectorate, Siapan. Working for GAP, and other U.S. retailers through the SAKO garment factory, she sewed “Made in the USA” labels into clothing, yet enjoyed none of the worker protections which U.S. workers do. In fact, she was fired for attempting to organize a union. Again, Arthur explains how the TPP takes advantage of the experience Chie had, and make it worse,

“Brand-name product companies, as well as retailers like Walmart and Target, want low Rules of Origin that enable them to source parts from wherever in the world they can get them for the cheapest price and then assemble them in low-wage TPP countries and still qualify for the zeroed-out tariff rates and quotas the TPP will provide. Often this means sourcing production wherever labor is the most exploited and environmental regulations the weakest.”

Because the government of Vietnam, which promotes it’s country as a low-cost labor alternative to China, is siding with the major transnationals in pushing for much lower Rules of Origin than most other countries within the TPP negotiations, we’d heard that the Rules of Origin negotiations are very heated. Despite photos of friendly handshakes after the recent full round in Lima, Peru, countries are far from reaching agreement, and continued disagreement over the chapter possesses the potential to sink the entire pact.

We tried for days to contact the Rules of Origin negotiators, but with no luck. We called the top hotels in the city and found that not only did most people not know where the negotiatiors were meeting, they also didn’t know what the TPP is, so we decided to take to the streets and look ourselves (and do some public education at the same time!). Here’s what happened:

TAKE ACTION!

Sign the petition to halt TPP negotiations.
Save the date July 23, 2013 for San Francisco’s action event against TPP and email TPPTuesday (at) gmail (dot) com for details.
Check out the June 25th TPP action photos on Facebook.

The following piece was originally posted by the Citizens Trade Coalition. Please stand with the growing coalition of organizations and people on 4 continents and say: #StopTPP!

Timed with the start of the next Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating round in Peru this May, communities throughout the Pacific Rim will be holding public assemblies to discuss the potential local impacts of the TPP and steps people can take together to prevent being saddled with a disastrous corporate trade deal.

Whether one wants to reverse the global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions; expand access to life-saving generic medications; support indigenous rights; protect communities’ ability to combat global warming; or sustain family farms and defend food sovereignty, there is no shortage of reasons to act together on the TPP.

One of the first steps is self-education, community dialogue and local organizing. Please attend one of the events already in the works in your community or help organize one yourself. Learn more (about) the Days of Action below and at this international website.

How to Organize a Community Assembly about the TPP:

Corporate media isn’t giving the TPP the attention it deserves, so it is up to us to spread the word. Organizing your own teach-in, town hall or community forum about the TPP is a great way to educate and mobilize your community about it.

• Find a venue. Union halls, churches, community centers and libraries are all great, free or low-cost venues. Choose a venue that is convenient and familiar to the audience you’re seeking to reach.

• Recruit speakers. You know your audience and what messengers will move them. Local labor, environmental and human rights organizations may be able to provide speakers — especially on the local impacts of past trade agreements such as NAFTA and the WTO — which you can supplement by speaking yourself about the TPP using the talking points found here. You can also reach out to the points of contact listed in this toolkit for additional speaker suggestions.

• Get cosponsors. Ask trusted local organizations if you can list them as event cosponsors and if they will spread the word about your event to their membership.

• Spend most of your time on turnout. At minimum, create an email about the event that you circulate to as many people as you can — asking them to forward it to their lists. Other turnout strategies include: creating a Facebook event page for the event; leafleting other events; posting flyers at the venue and elsewhere; phonebanking your friends and other phone lists; and putting an event listing in newspapers and newsletters. Please also email tppaction@citizenstrade.org and we may be able to help promote it.

• Invite Members of Congress. Consider inviting Members of Congress and their staff to attend your event. If they show up, they will learn something — and even if they don’t, they’ll at least know that constituents are talking about the TPP.

• Circulate a sign-in sheet. Have a sign-in sheet for the event, and have a volunteer hit up everyone as they enter and/or circulate it on a clipboard as people are seated. These are people who care about the TPP and you may want to communicate with them in the future. Be sure to get their names, email addresses and phone numbers.

• Include an action step. Pass out copies of this fact sheet at the event, and have people call their U.S. Representative on their cell phone before they leave with a message urging the Congress member to oppose Fast Track for the TPP. You can also circulate a poster-sized petition that you have people sign and then recruit volunteers to help deliver it to your local Congressional office; ask people (to) raise their hands if they can help bird-dog at an upcoming Congressional town hall; or break into small groups to plan other types of action.

• Spread the word about what you learn. Recruit someone to videotape your presenters and post the videos online. You can share the videos with people who signed up on the sign-up sheet and encourage them to share them with friends who couldn’t attend and to post them on social media. Also consider writing and circulating a press release about the event with short quotes about the TPP from each of your speakers. You can send it out to both the corporate media and over listserves to help spread the word.

Materials for the Days of Action

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (the key days of action fact sheet & action component)
TPP Organizer’s Toolkit (includes talking points and more)
Fast Track & the TPP Fact Sheet
TPP & Public Health Fact Sheet
TPP & Environment Fact Sheet
TPP & Wall Street Fact Sheet

A Sampling of TPP Events & Contacts

The main “Day of Action” is Saturday, May 11 — but you can organize an event any time. Email us at tppaction@citizenstrade.org if you want help promoting your local event.
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California
The TPP & Obama’s Asian Pivot
May 31 – June 2
San Francisco, CA
Contact: Victor Menotti, vmenotti@ifg.org
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District of Columbia
TPP Briefing & Strategy Discussion
Saturday, May 11 * Details TBA
Contact: Lacey Kohlmoos, lkohlmoos@citizen.org
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Illinois
TPP Teach-in (@ World Fair Trade Day Festival)
Tuesday, May 7 * 3:00pm
Daley Plaza, 50 W Washington
Chicago, IL
Contact: Josh Wise, josh@citizenstrade.org
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Minnesota
TPP Teach-in & World Fair Trade Day Celebration
Saturday, May 11 * 12:00 – 4:00pm
Regla De Oro Gallery, 2743 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis, MN
Contact: Josh Wise, josh@citizentrade.org
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Oregon
PDX People’s Assembly on the TPP
Saturday, May 11 * 1:00pm
First Unitarian Church, SW 12th Ave & Main St
Portland, OR
Contact: Elizabeth Swager, elizabeth@oregonfairtrade.org
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Eugene/Springfield People’s Assembly on the TPP
Monday, April 29 * 6:00pm
AFSCME Bldg, 688 Charnelton St
Eugene, OR
Contact: Elizabeth Swager, elizabeth@oregonfairtrade.org
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Jackson County People’s Assembly on the TPP
Sunday, April 28 * 4:30pm
At the Grass Shack Cafe, 205 Fern Valley Rd
Phoenix, OR (Exit 24 off I-5)
Contact: Elizabeth Swager, elizabeth@oregonfairtrade.org
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Pennsylvania
Dawson TPP Workshop
Thursday, May 16 * Details TBA
Contact: Amy Conahan, amy@citizenstrade.org
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Texas
San Antonio TPP Event
Details TBA
Contact: Bob Cash, bobcash@citizenstrade.org
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Washington
TPP People’s Assembly Seattle
Saturday, May 11 * 2:00 – 5:00pm
Central Co-op, 1900 E Madison
Seattle, WA
Contact: Kristen Beifus, kristen@washingtonfairtrade.org
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TPP People’s Assembly Olympia
Date & Time TBA
906 Columbia Street SW
Olympia, WA
Contact: Kristen Beifus, kristen@washingtonfairtrade.org
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For events in Canada and beyond, please click here.

2012 certainly hasn’t been boring! Thanks to you and the hundreds of other people who are part of the Elect Democracy campaign, we’ve taken action to free our democracy from the moneyed grip of corporate interests… Thank you.

Here are some Elect Democracy campaign highlights:

• “How Wall Street is Burning Democracy” Report and Legislative Scorecard: We made it easy to find out how much Wall Street gave to Congressional campaigns to check how often Congresspeople voted in line with Wall Street’s lobby position on free trade bills, Wall Street regulation, the bailout, and more. The Huffington Post, Yes! Magazine, Alternet, Nation of Change, Daily Kos, and dozens of other news outlets covering our shocking revelation that Wall Street spends over $1,331 per minute on political influence via lobbying and campaign money.

• RNC/DNC: We brought our legislative scorecard and report to Tampa and Charlotte where we marched on both conventions with our call to get corporate money out of our democracy.

• Stick It to Super PACs: Just days before the most expensive U.S. election of all time we used email, phone, and social media to clog the gears of the ominous Super PACs! GOOD magazine, Upworthy, and others helped us spread the message. Over 1,500 people Stuck It to Super PACs on October 25th! You can still take action here.

• Election Day: do you remember that exact moment when the election was called and we learned that Barack Obama would remain President? I do. What has this election meant to you? Leave a comment on our blog.

• #StopTPP: I joined social, labour and faith based groups on the US/Canada border earlier this month to stop the TransPacific Partnership. To learn more about this ominous, 13 country free trade deal (and our work to stop it), read my blog about the TPPxBorder rally we attended on the U.S.-Canada border.

All that and so much more! A great place to read all about it is our online Media Center which has a vast collection of articles about our work this year.

Next year, we have even more ways to take action. Elect Democracy is taking on the hired hands that call the shots in DC: big shot lobbyists. From challenging Super PAC millions to lobbyist billions, our work is going to be fun, tough, and more important than ever.

We’ll also need your help. Compared to the amount of money flowing from Wall Street to Washington, when you see all we have accomplished, we truly make the most of every penny.

Consider giving a Global Exchange membership to a friend this season and support Elect Democracy.

Again, thank you so much for your action. I look forward to starting 2013 with refreshed energy and refueled strategies.

Happy Holidays!

Exactly 13 years after the #N30 actions to shut down the WTO, Global Exchange returns to Seattle with a similar message: #StopTPP!

We all know free trade agreements are politically, economically, and environmentally harmful.

But this weekend at TPPxBorder, hearing people speak to the real consequences of these deals brought my understanding of the dangers of these Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) to a very human scale.

Listening to the voices of people who are affected by these FTAs – a pulp mill worker from Everett, WA, who got laid off two years before pension, HIV positive people who won’t be able to afford life-saving medication because of patent laws that protect profits instead of access, a Philippine woman who was forced to leave her family in search of work – these voices remind me that free trade isn’t just an ‘issue’ to discuss or debate. Free trade is about about profits at the expense of people’s health and safely. About trade over ethics. About politics over people and planet.

Free trade ‘agreements’ are anything but consensual.

In fact, the only partnering happening in the TransPacific ‘Partnership’ is is the stitching together of the 1%- corporations and politicians- whilst the entirety of civil society is excluded and ignored… for now.

That’s why on Saturday December 1, a crowd of hundreds gathered at the U.S.-Canada border to demonstrate our unity and solidarity against the TransPacific Partnership. Representatives from four of the 13 negotiating countries – along with New Zealand by phone – spoke of the risks that the TPP presents to their communities, and the powerful international unity being built to stand up and protect our dignity, our planet, and our human rights.

Jill Mangaliman, Philippine U.S. Solidarity Organization pusoseattle.wordpress.com/

We called this one TPPxBorder: The People’s Round. What I loved about this rally wasn’t only the fiery speakers, the diversity, the music, the unity, the hot coffee, and the ultra-legitimacy of our opposition to this heinous version of the TPP…. what I loved was learning about what an alternative deal would look like- one by and for the people. Listening to speakers and experts articulately describe what fair trade looks like, what it offers communities internationally, reminds me why these fights are so important, and the promise of real, practical, and respectful trade solutions. We have answers – now is the time to join hands and fight for them.

After our rally, and piñata action (in which people managed to overcome ‘blindfolds’ of corporate greenwashing and lobbyist money to finally destroy the TPP piñata and release the affordable jellybean ‘medicines’ and GMO-free popcorn trapped inside!) we headed indoors to a warm meal and strategy sessions to plan future action.

Global Exchange & Witness for Peace co-led a “Social Media to #StopTPP” breakout group to discuss “Twitterstorming” the corporations secretly negotiating TPP.

The breakout group I co-lead was about how we can use social media to #StopTPP. Our strategy is to call out the corporations negotiating the TPP in secret… and put their secrets in public view on social media channels. This week, our coalition members are calling out two corporate interests a day on their ties to the TPP… would you like to join the Twitterstorm? Just follow @GlobalExchange and @ElectDemocracy on Twitter, then retweet our actions every day this week at 11am and 2pmPST to help spread the word about #StopTPP using the very follower lists that these corporations have built. We can use your help and you can participate from anywhere.

The TransPacific Partnership is on a 1%-gilded beltway and it’s moving fast. But there is time (and enough of us) to stop it. The first thing we all can do is help spread the word. None of us can afford another NAFTA. Help us get the last 250,000 signatures needed this year to reach 1 million on the Avaaz petition against the TPP! And ask your organization to sign the Unity Statement.

VIDEO: Unity Statement at TPPxBorder Rally Dec. 1, 2012

For more information about the TransPacific Partnership and what you can do to stop it, see “10 Reasons to Oppose the TPP.” Thank you for supporting Fair Trade this holiday season, and telling corporations negotiating the TPP in secret exactly what you think of them. Together, we can #StopTPP.

That’s right folks, the sign says “Free Trade, my Ass!”

The following is a guest post from Kristen Beifus, Executive Director of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, working on behalf of people and the planet for a fair global trading system and lead organizer of the December 1 Day of Action. Join Global Exchange staff members Hillary Lehr and Carleen Pickard, on the border this Saturday!

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Ten Reasons Why the TransPacific Partnership Matters…

It is only getting bigger by the day: Thailand knocking at the TPP Door
We have not learned from NAFTA: Mexico ordered to pay Cargill $95 million for attempting to keep out high-fructose corn syrup
In Free Trade Agreements, corporate profits always trump the environment: Canada/Quebec sued under NAFTA for its ban on fracking by a US corporation
It Doesn’t Matter if you are a sovereign nation with labor and environmental laws: Here is a list of the NAFTA chapter 11 cases
Or just trying to survive with a life-threatening illness on a few dollars a day: Public health advocates in Malaysia protest reduced access to generic medicines in trade deals
Congress is trying, but those who we elect are not part of negotiating this deal-our democracy is at stake! Take this recent Sign-On letter to President Obama from Senator Al Franken on the labor rights concerns in the TPP and urge Senators Cantwell and Murray to sign it!
Sweatshops still exist: Here is a recent report by Right2Work
Companies are willing to invest millions of dollars to keep consumers in the dark: Here are the corporations who defeated the GMO labeling initiative in California
Only when we connect our issues, and combine our strength can we succeed: Dec. 1st is also world AIDS Day
We are not alone, we are the majority, and our voices are needed for trade to ever benefit workers and support healthy communities and a sustainable planet: Sign the Avaaz petition to reach a million who say “Stop the Corporate Death Star”, stop the TPP!

TAKE ACTION!

Join Fair Trade bus against the TPP: Join trade justice advocates from Canada, Mexico, and the US from DC to Northern, California, Oregon and WA this December 1st and get on the Fair Trade Bus to the Canada/U.S. border (Peach Arch Park) & take action against the TransPacific Partnership!!

The day of action will include:

A rally/action with Seattle’s Labor Chorus
Seattle Fandango Project
Movitas a radical marching band
Speakers from First Nations tribes in Canada fighting to protect their sovereignty
Workers from Kimberly Clark’s Mill in Everett who had their jobs off-shored this year
Philippine-US Solidarity Organization sharing tales of free-trade in Asia
Farm justice advocates from Community to Community and international advocates from the Council of Canadians, the national AFL-CIO, Washington State Labor Council
Asuper fun TPP People’s Action!
Backbone’s Free Trade My Ass Balloon and Flush the TPP will also be flying along the border and TPP: No New NAFTAs thanks to IBEW Local 46!

Then (there’s more?!):

The People will jointly strategize on how to engage with social media with Global Exchange & Witness for Peace
Get organizations onto a Tri-National Unity Letter with Citizen’s Trade Campaign
Talk about the TPP in 2 minutes or less with SPEEA and develop and implement creative tactics to stop the TPP by the next round in March, 2013!

Want to get on the buses leaving from Seattle? Go to TPPxBorder.org and sign-up.
Buses will be leaving at 10:30am and returning to Seattle at 6:00pm. A delicious hot Mexican meal will be provided for everyone thanks to Community to Community!

Questions? Contact Kristen (at) washingtonfairtrade (dot) org or 206.227.3079

Follow along: Follow protest happenings on Twitter with hashtag #StopTPP.

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